


Reflections In Time

by Miko



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Bisexual Female Character, Crossing Timelines, F/F, F/M, Flirting, Friends to Lovers, Lesbian Character, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Team Dynamics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-24
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-05-13 11:29:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14747975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miko/pseuds/Miko
Summary: When an experimental time travel device blows up in her face and severely affects her chronal accelerator, former Overwatch agent Tracer finds herself in a reality she had only dreamed of. On the surface, it seems like the next thing to paradise. Overwatch's flag still flies proudly over the world, and everyone she cares about is alive and well - sometimes better off than she remembers them. But Talon's insidious grip on the world still exists, and even all the might of Overwatch may not be enough to stop the coming tide.Lieutenant Lena Oxton, on the other hand, is stranded in a world that's gone to hell in a handbasket. With few resources and even fewer people she can trust, her chances of finding out what Talon's machine did to her seem slim to none, let alone reversing the effect. Worse, she can't bring herself to sit by and watch as her friends struggle, and finds herself quickly embroiled in their efforts to save the world despite itself.To find a way home, they'll each have to embrace the other's reality and forge a place for themselves, making friends and maybe even finding love along the way. The question is, how many ties of love and loyalty do you need before 'home' finds a new meaning?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So much of the information about Overwatch canon is buried in interviews and voice lines and other tiny little snippets, and what we do know has more gaps than a lace doily. I'm probably going to get things wrong, even aside from the deliberate liberties I'm taking with some details. So we'll call this a double AU, and hopefully there's not any problems that are TOO glaring in the reality meant to be canon.

Missions _never_ went exactly as planned. It was a well-known corollary to Murphy's Law, the bloody bastard. Tracer had been on some operations that went rather sideways even back in the 'good old days' of Overwatch, and since Winston had initiated the Recall, their 'plans' had been built of wishes tied together with shoestrings anyway.

But nothing had ever been quite _this_ much of an epic fail before.

The Talon base she was infiltrating was allegedly a minor munitions depot, with a light guard complement. It wasn't until she'd already snuck inside and was smack in the middle of it that Tracer realized their intel was badly, _badly_ wrong.

The warehouse was a munitions storage facility, all right. 'Minor' wasn't the word she'd use to describe crate after crate of pulse weapons, projectile guns, grenade launchers, and incendiary devices stacked from floor to ceiling in the tight space. 'Light' also didn't do justice to what looked like a full sodding platoon of highly armed, highly alert enemy troops. 

Pulling back to hide behind a pile of plastic explosives as three soldiers walked by, Tracer toggled the switch for her comms and spoke as quietly as she could. "Winston, whoever your informant was, I want a bloody word with them when I get back. And I mean that literally." 

"Is the warehouse empty?" Winston's deep voice held a note of dismay and apology. 

"I wish!" Slipping from one shadow to the next, Tracer made her way cautiously toward a fire exit at the back, away from the troops. She couldn't retreat the way she'd come in, because the vent exit she'd dropped out of wasn't accessible from ground level. The plan had always been for her to go out a side door once she'd disabled the guards and dealt with the munitions.

"I count at least thirty armed troops here," she continued her sotto voce report, creeping around the edge of the room. "Pretty sure I'm not seeing all of them, either. I dunno what the deal is, but something major is going down."

"Tracer, get out of there." Dismay morphed into urgent concern. "Abort the mission. We're not prepared for this."

"You don't have to tell me twice!" Tracer assured him, fervent. This was meant to be an easy solo op, a way to get rid of some of Talon's resources in the area as a precursor to a potential attack on the main base. Not at all the sort of thing where she needed to win no matter the risk, such as when she and Winston had stopped Talon from retrieving Doomfist's gauntlet. 

Tracer was stubborn, not stupid - though people frequently confused the two. She wasn't going to throw her life away for little to no gain. She'd pull out, do further reconnaissance, and maybe come back later with Winston as backup. 

The exit was just ahead, less than thirty meters away. There would probably be a fire alarm on it, but she could disable that, and...

A sudden wave of silence spread from the front of the warehouse. Then there was a thunderous sound of combat boots on pavement, as every one of the troops snapped to attention and saluted. Tracer eased herself around the corner of a pallet full of crates and peered in the direction everyone else was staring.

Her heart stopped as a tall, thin, almost androgynous redheaded woman stopped in the middle of the room, staring around her with a disdainful expression. 

"O'Deorain," Tracer whispered, almost too soft even for the comm to pick up. Winston made an inquiring noise, and she swallowed hard. "Moira O'Deorain is here."

"Well?" the former Blackwatch agent said, impatience shading her voice so deeply it was almost visible. "Get on with it. I want everything we need for the assault unpacked and ready by midnight. The foreign dignitaries are only here until dawn. Make certain you use _nothing_ that wouldn't be available to the local insurgents. There must be no question of who is responsible for the attack."

The soldiers hopped to with a vengeance, and Tracer saw more than one fearful expression on the faces of the hardened men and women. She could sympathize. Her heart was pounding in double-time, so hard she could feel it thumping against her ribs.

"Did you catch any of that?" She rubbed the heel of her hand over her chest, trying to calm her racing pulse. 

"Yes." The word was barely on the safe side of a growl. "Athena confirms. Top secret flight records show ambassadors and ministers from multiple major world powers arrived late tonight, after dark. There's no solid information on why."

"Something Talon doesn't want to happen, so probably they’re signing a peace treaty or mutual assistance pact of some sort." Other than the painful thud of her heart, Tracer felt numb with shock and dismay. So much for this being a mission she could walk away from and come back to try another day. "Worse, if the local rebels seem to be at fault, half of those governments may well declare war instead of peace. We can't let this happen, Winston. We _can't_."

"Tracer..." For a moment she thought the big gorilla was going to try to talk her out of it, but in the end, he sighed. "No, we can't. Do what you have to do. Try to come home safe."

"I always do my best, big guy." The words threatened to catch in her throat, and she had to swallow hard around a lump of ice that had formed there. Tracer was good in a fight, _damn_ good, but she was only one person. Taking on thirty or more enemies was beyond her abilities.

"So think smart," she scolded herself. "Sneaky. Like a ninja! WWGD - what would Genji do?" 

Go for the biggest target first. Cut off the head, and the body falls. That way even if she couldn't take them all, she'd at least have stopped their mission.

Now focused and determined, she reversed her course and slipped back through the crates and boxes, toward where Moira was overseeing five grunts loading some weird sort of tech into a heavily padded case. If she could catch Moira by surprise, kill her before she fought back, Tracer might yet be able to then battle her way out of the warehouse in the chaos. 

"Be careful with that, cretins," Moira snapped at the sweating soldiers. The device didn't look heavy, just bulky and awkward, so the sweat must be from nerves. They were certainly handling it like it was made of spun glass and could shatter in their hands at any moment. Whatever it was, it didn't look like anything an insurgent group might have, so it must be for some other stage of Talon’s plan.

Stopping when she was as close as she could get without revealing herself, Tracer closed her eyes and drew in steady, measured breaths. She could do this. She _could_ do this.

She bloody well _would_ do this.

Blinking forward out of her hiding shot, Tracer emptied the clip of her pulse guns straight at Moira's head. To her shock and dismay, the Irishwoman faded into mist right before her eyes, much the same way the Reaper could. The energy bullets passed through with no effect, and Moira reformed a foot away, smirking.

Now the alarm had gone up, the soldiers setting the device down to turn their weapons on her. Only the fact that they were clearly unwilling to risk friendly fire gave her enough time to blink back out of the middle of them. They shouted in confusion, and she emptied her reloaded clip into the nearest one, sending the man crashing to the ground in a spray of blood.

The others fired, and she blinked again to dodge. More and more soldiers were converging on them, which in the short term was an advantage for Tracer - they were causing chaos and getting in each other's way. But it wouldn't take long before that turned to a disadvantage, as the sheer press of bodies gave her nowhere to blink to for safety.

All the while Moira stood watching, arms crossed over her chest and a gloating smile on her lips. "I thought we might be seeing you, little girl. Pity you didn't bring your big ape with you. There are so many experiments I would love to run on him."

The idea of Winston once again reduced to nothing more than a lab animal, an expendable research subject with no say in his own life, made Tracer see red. "Over my dead body," she snapped, and blinked forward as if to shoot once again at Moira.

This time she was ready for it when the scientist faded to mist, and held fire until the woman reformed. _Then_ she emptied the clip, but Moira laughed and dodged, right hand extended toward Tracer. Purple fog enveloped her, seeming to steal the very strength from her limbs. Caught by surprise, Tracer stumbled and nearly fell.

Desperate, she emptied the clip again, but not at Moira - just _behind_ the woman, at the delicate and dangerous looking device the soldiers had been carrying. Whatever it was, it was clearly important. If Tracer couldn't kill Moira, maybe she could at least wreck the thing and stop that part of Talon's plan.

"No!" Moira cried out as Tracer fired a steady stream of pulse energy into the machine. "You imbecile! What have you done?"

The scientist dove for it, but the machine was already starting to throw out sparks in all directions. The pulse energy appeared to have overloaded it as well as damaged it. Tracer gulped as she realized it was about to explode - and she was standing right next to it.

Instinct kicked in just as the first wave of heat from the blast licked at the exposed skin of her face in a tingling burn. Throwing herself into the chronal energy generated by her accelerator, Tracer aimed herself backward and rewound. She pushed her limits, intending to go as far as she could without disassociating, to try to get out of whatever the blast range would be. Or at least give herself a headstart to blink away.

She was halfway through the rewind when the leading edge of the explosion caught up to her position. Too fast for her conscious mind to follow, she was engulfed in the wave of energy - energy that looked oddly blue-tinted, just like the trail she left behind when she blinked. 

The world melted, fracturing into shards like a broken mirror, whirling around and around in a deadly tornado. Winston had explained that the images she saw were her mind trying to make sense of the impossible physics of it all, by imposing some kind of symbolic reality. But god help her, it _felt_ like the shards were slicing her to pieces.

Even the first time, when she'd been trapped out of sync for months, hadn't been anything like this. The accelerator was hot against her chest, sparking frantically with overloads and short-circuits, and refused to pull her back into sync. Tracer screamed, and screamed again, but the sound was lost among the shattered fragments of time.

It went on and on, endless and eternal. Time did not pass in a place where time did not exist, even though Tracer's mind perceived that it did, which meant the whirlwind might never stop - at least, not until it had torn her to shreds.

The only question was how long it would take her to go utterly mad.

As abruptly as it started, the fragments coalesced into one shining whole, then exploded. Tracer found herself back in sync, still screaming frantically, clawing at the air as if she could catch and hang on to time itself.

Air and time, unfortunately, made for lousy physical support. She crashed to her knees, then tumbled onto her side where she huddled tight. Retching whilst gasping for air at the same time turned out not to be a pleasant experience, but compared to the hell she'd just been through, it was a sunny day at the beach.

Why weren't the enemy shooting her? She could hear guns firing through the ringing in her ears, so not all of them had been downed by the explosion. As badly as she wanted to stay curled up for the rest of forever, Tracer's only hope of getting out of this alive was to move fast and take advantage of the chaos.

To that end, she forced her eyes open, struggling to focus her bleary gaze. Enemy soldiers ran this way and that, firing wildly in all directions, as if trying to hit a target moving too fast for them to aim at. Tracer was very familiar with the phenomenon, accustomed to seeing it as she blinked back and forth across the battlefield. But she was lying here helpless, so who was toying with the enemy?

With great effort, she forced herself up onto her elbows, then to hands and knees. There she had to stop and catch her breath, gulping against another bout of retching when the world spun dizzily around her. An enemy soldier crashed to the ground a meter away, throat a bloody mess and life already leaving her eyes. Another fell on the other side, and there was a strange green tinge to the light in the warehouse.

Surely Winston couldn't have gotten here this fast. How long had she been unconscious?

When she tried to lift her head to see better, however, the vertigo got the better of her. Reeling, Tracer clutched at the nearest crate, trying to keep from hitting the ground again. No further weapons fire reached her ears, but she wasn't sure if that was because the enemy had stopped firing, or if she just couldn't hear it through her disorientation.

Then a new sound came, a slow rasp of metal against metal, the scrape almost too soft to register. It was followed by a quiet click, as if the sliding metal had stopped against another piece. Something in the back of her mind tugged at her, insisting that she knew that sound, but she couldn't place it. She drew breath, trying to steady herself enough to speak, but her unknown ally beat her to it. 

"Lieutenant?" The voice was a light tenor, soft and concerned, and vaguely familiar. There were overtones of Asia in his accent, she thought maybe Japanese. "Do you require assistance?"

Lieutenant? There must be more than one person out there. Well, that made sense. As far as she could hear, none of the enemy were still moving, and surely one person couldn't have taken down all those people. Even assuming many had fallen to the blast, and maybe some others had run, that was still an awful lot of...

Realizing her thoughts were rambling, Tracer shook her head to try to jolt them back into sense. She regretted the act immediately, as the pounding in her temples worsened and the room spun again. Stomach heaving, she clung to the crate and closed her eyes, trying to center herself.

Quiet footsteps padded toward her, and she sensed someone hunker down beside her. A warm hand touched her shoulder a moment later, steadying her, and the same soft voice came again. "Lena? Are you injured?"

Opening her eyes, she finally managed to focus on her rescuer. It was an Asian man, of that indeterminate age where he wasn't young and wasn't old. She was guessing closer to young than old, given the wild green spikes of his hair. He wore dark clothes that looked like a cross between an anime ninja and a Blackwatch uniform, and though she was certain she'd never met him, his eyes were as tantalizingly familiar as his voice.

He was looking back at her in open concern, and she realized she'd never answered his question. Figuring if he knew her name and had saved her life, he was probably on her side, she replied with the truth. "Dizzy as anything... ulp. Nauseated, too. O'Deorain?"

"Fled," the man answered, to her great disappointment. Tracer had hoped maybe the explosion had killed the Irishwoman. "She was gravely injured. I would have pursued, but you were clearly in no shape to handle the rest of the troops." 

"Well, you weren't wrong," she muttered, and tried again to haul herself to her feet. The stranger helped, slinging her arm over his shoulder and putting his around her waist, steadying her when she wobbled. "Oooh, careful. Move too fast and I might toss my cookies all over you."

"I don't believe there are any reinforcements coming in, so we can go slow," he promised her. He was perhaps a dozen centimeters taller than her, thin as a whip but solidly muscled, more than strong enough to take her weight. "Concussion? Or something more serious?"

"Not sure." She swallowed hard against another stomach heave, and wondered how much to tell him. Ally or not, she didn't know him well enough to trust him. That meant she couldn't risk telling him about the accelerator, much less the fact that it was potentially malfunctioning. "You've got me at a disadvantage. You called me Lena, so you obviously recognize me. Don't suppose you'd like to share your name with the class?"

He stopped walking abruptly, turning his head to give her a wide-eyed, baffled look. "Are you saying you don't know who I am?"

"Should I?" Damn it, he _did_ seem familiar, but she couldn't place him no matter how she tried. "Sorry, usually I'm good with names and faces. Have we met?"

"Lena..." Bafflement morphed to deep concern. "Of course you know me. I've been sparring with you since you were a cadet. We've worked together for more than seven years."

The pieces - _utterly impossible_ pieces - finally clicked, and it was her turn to stare. She'd never heard his voice without computer modulation before, his face had always been mostly covered, and the eyes that looked back at her held no trace of the faint red glow that marked cybernetic ocular implants. And yet, and yet, somehow, it _was_...

" _Genji?!_ "


	2. Chapter 2

Shock put a tight leash on Tracer's tongue as they made their way out of the warehouse and across to where the small dropship was hidden. Genji (how the bloody _hell_ was Genji walking around in a fully human body as if it was no big deal?) seemed to decide a speedy exit was more important than getting questions answered as well, because he remained as silent as her.

Only when he half carried her up the ramp of the dropship did he finally speak, but it wasn't to Tracer. "Athena, initiate the emergency protocol for an injured pilot. Get us home."

"Acknowledged. Shall I contact the Watchpoint to have a medic standing by for arrival?" The ramp door began to close, and Tracer heard the familiar, almost subliminal whine of the hover jets powering up for takeoff.

"That's probably wise," Genji agreed with the AI. He helped Tracer over to a jumpseat, and eased her down into the contoured surface. 

"Medic?" So far it was just her who'd answered the Recall, though Winston continued to hold out hope that more would join them. "What medic?"

"I imagine Mercy will want to be there herself. She considers you one of 'hers'." Genji remained on his feet as the airship lifted off, easily compensating for the movement of the craft. "Are you still nauseated?"

Of course Angela would come, if Winston told her there was a medical emergency. "A little, but I don't think I'll throw up again." Athena would keep the ship steady, unless they hit serious turbulence. 

If there was pursuit that required evasive action or return fire, Tracer would have to take the controls, but right now she had to agree with letting the AI handle the flight. She was nearly convinced she must be hallucinating. That tended to make for lousy piloting skills. "What about the rest of your team?"

Digging through the stash of emergency medical supplies, Genji pulled out a handheld scanner. "There's no one but us on this mission."

"But you said something to a lieutenant," Tracer protested. 

He paused with the scanner held over her, giving her an inscrutable look. After a moment he shook his head, and flicked the scanner on. "I was speaking to you."

"Wha... but... I..." Tracer sputtered for a good ten seconds before she got hold of herself. "You're not making any sense. More importantly, are we going to address the bloody elephant in the room?" His brows drew further together, and she made a frustrated noise. "You're human!"

That earned her a slow, utterly confused blink. "As opposed to what?" he finally asked, a note of disbelieving humour in his voice. "An Omnic?"

"A cyborg!" She threw her hands into the air. "The last time I saw you, the only human bits showing were most of your head, left arm, and a part of your torso. I dunno how much was beneath the armour, but..."

"I've never had any cybernetic implants," he cut her off, staring at her as if she'd gone insane. "Certainly not to the extent you're describing. The scanner says there's nothing physically wrong with you, but you are not being rational."

"Nothing about this is rational," she moaned, holding her head in her hands. A terrible thought struck her, and she looked up at him with wide eyes. "How long was I unconscious? Could Talon have done something to my mind?"

"Minutes," Genji replied, shaking his head. "And you were in my sight the whole time." He took the seat beside her, slumping into it, reminding her more of McCree than himself. Tracer had never seen Genji sit with anything less than perfect posture - though that might have had something to do with the metal carapace his body was encased in.

"Well, I'm not upset to know I won't turn into a sleeper agent," she muttered. "But that brings us right back to 'this is bloody impossible'." Could this be a Talon attempt to fool her somehow? Surely Moira was too smart to use a human-looking actor to play Genji, which would of course lead Tracer to question the whole thing.

Unless that was the point. Because Tracer knew Moira was too smart to screw up that way, she'd immediately discount this being a Talon plot, thereby making that the cleverest move Talon could make. She had only Genji's word that Talon hadn't held her captive any length of time, and if he was a plant, of course he would tell her that.

With most of the Overwatch agents she knew and trusted, she'd be able to spot an impostor immediately. She'd already noted several changes in personality and habits from the Genji she remembered, yet she was writing them off as due to him no longer being a cyborg. So oddly, making 'Genji' human was the easiest way to keep her from realizing he was a fake.

But then why not simply say that he'd been healed somehow? Why claim he'd _never_ been a cyborg?

Ugh, she was going in circles. How did Blackwatch agents think this way all the time, and not drive themselves mental? Tracer rubbed at her eyes, trying to ease away the headache pounding in her temples. "What a sodding mess."

"Let me help." Strong, clever fingers slid through her hair and pressed against several seemingly random points on her skull... and the headache eased. She gasped in response, and he chuckled. Another thing she'd never witnessed him do before. 

"Ooh, you're welcome to keep doing that as long as you like," she said, trying not to lean into the touch like an affectionate cat. She mustn't let her guard down, not until she knew what the hell was going on. But damn, it felt good. Especially when he stroked his fingers through her hair - then ruffled the spikes out of place before withdrawing.

"Hey! Watch it." Just in time, she remembered not to toss her head to flip the dangling front strand back into place - her headache would undoubtedly get worse again if she tried. 

He'd made the soft gesture of affection casually, as if it was something he did all the time, but he'd never once touched her outside of a sparring match before. Never touched _anyone_ if he could help it, or so it seemed to her.

“You should rest,” he said, his dark eyes solemn. “I’ll keep watch for any problems. I’m worried about you.”

“I’m worried about me, too,” Tracer muttered, but sighed and leaned her head back against the cushion obediently. She was far too wound up to actually sleep, but her mind drifted off into a daze that almost resembled rest. 

Eventually, a soft ping intruded from the cockpit, jerking her back to full awareness. Athena spoke a moment later. "We're approaching the Watchpoint. Shall I engage emergency automatic landing protocols?"

"No, I've got it." Determined, Tracer pushed to her feet, and this time didn't wobble too badly. "I could land this tub in my sleep, no sense risking a problem if something goes wonky." 

And she wanted to see for herself exactly where they were coming in. There were no windows in the transport space of the small dropships, so if this was a Talon trick, they could take her anywhere and have it set up to look like the Watchpoint. The dropships were fast, but the flight felt far too short for them to have reached Gibraltar already.

Genji looked doubtful, but made no attempt to stop her as she headed for the cockpit. Tracer decided to take that as a good sign. It meant they really were coming in to the real Watchpoint, not some secret Talon base.

Then she got a good look out the cockpit window, and gasped.

It wasn't Watchpoint: Gibraltar, as she'd expected. They were coming in for a landing on the roof of the Swiss Overwatch Headquarters. The same headquarters Talon had blown up years ago, which had never been rebuilt. 

Yet here it stood, like the shining beacon of order and protection it had once been. More than that, she could see people everywhere - tiny ants going in and out through the main doors far below, and techs buzzing around the rest of the dropships on the landing pad. Angela Ziegler was indeed waiting for them, in a labcoat rather than her armour but holding the Caduceus at the ready.

"It's headquarters," Tracer murmured in a daze, as if saying the words out loud could somehow make the reality before her possible. She clutched at the back of the pilot's seat, her whole body trembling, head spinning on the edge of passing out from shock. "There's people. It's _Overwatch_."

Genji had come up behind her, now gripped her by the shoulders to steady her as she swayed. When she looked back at him, he was once again frowning in confusion. "As opposed to what?" he repeated his earlier question. "You thought I'd bring you to Blackwatch Headquarters?"

"No, you don't understand." Tracer's voice shook, and she had to bite her lower lip to keep it from doing the same. This couldn't be a Talon trick. The scale of the deception was unbelievably huge, and _nothing_ she could possibly tell them would justify this kind of resource expense. 

Looking back at the building, at the beautiful, impossible Overwatch flag flying high and proud above it, she finally accepted what had to be the truth. "I'm losing my bloody mind."

* * *

An hour later, Tracer sat in the infirmary as Angela scanned her for the third time. Genji had taken a spot near the door, holding up the wall with his back, arms crossed over his chest, and one foot braced against it. He looked deeply concerned. So did Angela. Tracer certainly couldn't blame them.

"Nothing," Angela sighed when the scanner beeped to indicate its work was done. "Not even a minute trace of any drug, hallucinatory or otherwise. This is the deepest scan I can run. There's no damage, no lesions or bleeding, no anomalies in your brainwaves to indicate programming. Genji, you're certain they couldn't have done anything to her that you didn't see?"

"I was distracted for a few seconds here and there while fighting," he admitted. "But O'Deorain made her escape in the first moments, and didn't go near Lena. The other troops around her were as dazed as she was. Even if the soldiers had a chance to dose her, I doubt they’d have had anything so sophisticated that you can’t detect it."

"I'm going mental," Tracer repeated her earlier statement. She kept cycling through disbelief, anger, and terror, over and over again. It was emotionally exhausting. "That's the only explanation."

A new voice spoke from the doorway, gruff but affectionate. "Let's not jump to any conclusions just yet."

Shocked all over again, Tracer jerked her head around so fast her neck twinged a protest. Yet another impossibility stood in the doorway, tall and so broad-shouldered he blocked the whole space. She lurched up to sit fully, half intending to throw herself off the bed at him until Angela pressed a hand against Tracer's chest to stop her.

"Commander Morrison?" Tracer's voice was shrill, and she could feel the blood drain from her face. The tears she'd been holding back with fierce willpower finally broke through her reserve, grief accomplishing what fear hadn't. "You... you're... but you're _dead_!"

Except, of course, if the Overwatch Headquarters had never been blown up, then he couldn't have been killed in an explosion that didn't happen. Pushed past her limits, she buried her face in her hands, not wanting any of them to see the tears well up and spill over. Angela, she might not have minded. But the last thing she ever wanted was to appear weak in front of her hero, Jack Morrison.

"Rumours of my demise have been greatly exaggerated," Morrison said, his delivery of the ancient joke so dry that he actually succeeded in making her giggle despite herself. A strong hand landed on her shoulder, big enough to make her feel like a fragile doll, and squeezed gently. "Steady on, Lieutenant."

"God, not you, too!" She looked up at him despite the tears, dismayed. "I'm not a lieutenant. I barely made it out of the bloody cadet program before Overwatch was shut down. None of this is possible!"

It was a literal dream come true. If a genie had popped up and told her to wish for anything, anything at all, this was pretty much exactly what she'd have asked for. It _had_ to be a product of her imagination.

"Lena..." Another voice, far deeper than Morrison's, both familiar and welcome. Winston squeezed through the doorway to stand at the foot of the bed. Next to him, the Commander looked like he was a scrawny teenager. 

Like everyone else, Winston was frowning in baffled concern... but his gaze was focused on the table beside her, where the chronal accelerator sat. It was no longer throwing sparks, but the blue glow from the core was dim and flickering. "What's that doing there?"

"Angela wanted it off for the tests," Tracer explained. Usually the medic didn't bother to make her remove it, but considering the circumstances, she hadn't wanted any interference with the deep scan. 

"No, I mean..." Winston adjusted his glasses, switching his gaze from the accelerator to her. "Why is _that_ one there?"

Tracer shook her head. "To steal what appears to be Genji's new favourite phrase - as opposed to what?" Behind Winston, Genji huffed a soft laugh.

"The one you were wearing when you left," Winston said, his frown deepening. "That's one of the earlier prototypes, isn't it? Did something go wrong with your latest one? Where did you even find that?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." At this point, she’d repeated the words so often they came out almost by rote. 

"When we went into the warehouse, she was wearing her usual one," Genji put in, tilting his head as he, too, stared at the damaged accelerator. "I was distracted by her injury and all the confusion, but I believe she's been wearing that one since I went to her after the explosion. How is that possible?"

Tracer thought about the bizarre effect of the rewind she'd done mid-explosion. Ice formed a solid lump in her gut. "Something went wrong with the accelerator," she admitted, hands clenching. "When the shockwave hit. I've never experienced anything like it. You think it affected my mind, somehow?" 

For some reason Winston had never been able to explain, the chronal shifts she experienced never altered her memories, or her perception of time moving forward. When she rewound, she didn't lose the memories even though her brain _should_ have reverted to its prior state, just like the rest of her body. When she blinked forward, her mind didn't skip a second in time like her body did. If that had changed...

But Winston was shaking his head. "That wouldn't explain a reversion of your accelerator itself. And while a drastically overextended rewind might explain the strange effects you experienced during it, there's no reason you would have altered memories of the intervening time. However..."

He picked up the accelerator and examined it more closely, then ran a scanner over it. This one was different from Angela's, something Winston had invented during the process of freeing her from her chronal prison. He frowned at the readout, then ran the scan a second time.

"Well?" Morrison finally broke into the tense silence. "Don't leave us hanging, big guy."

"Oh!" Winston couldn't actually blush, but Tracer had learned to tell when he was embarrassed. "My apologies. The chronal signature on this device is subtly different from what it should be. I can barely detect the shift, but it _is_ present."

He said the words as if they should explain everything, but Tracer was still lost. "What does that mean? It didn't properly pull me back into sync? Surely Angela’s scanners would have noticed that."

"It's not out of sync. It's _different_ ," he insisted. "This accelerator does not belong in our quantum reality - and therefore, neither do you. You're not crazy, Lena. You're in an alternate timeline."

Just when she believed the day couldn't possibly hold any greater shocks for her. "A parallel universe? Are you serious?"

Everyone else seemed just as stunned as she was. After a long moment, Genji stirred, pushing away from the wall. "If this Lena is from another world... where is _ours_?"


End file.
